MRS3 The Velvet Hand (27 page)

In a moment it was over, Mrs. Bristed lowered her eyes, Bristed straightened up, and we were all talking easily again. But thereafter Straiker never moved far from Bristed's side; and for my part I made it my business to keep an eye on the woman. Apparently Mme Storey had not noticed anything; but you never can tell about her.

They had a very up-to-date and efficient police department in that town, and naturally they wanted to exhibit it to a stranger. Their methods were a little too spectacular for our taste. A motor patrol came clanging downhill to the bridge with half the populace in pursuit. There were four smart young constables in the car, who jumped out and saluted Mme Storey. They had a sort of portable searchlight operated with power from the engine. They set this up on the parapet of the bridge, flooding the gentle little river below with an unnatural light.

"Constable Beddowe will be downstream directly with a boat, 'm," said the sergeant.

Within a minute or two there were five hundred people on the scene. The police, however, kept the bridge free, allowing nothing to cross but the tramcars. Our little group, of course, was the centre of attention. I hate to be made conspicuous in this manner. Mme Storey was quite undisturbed. The people, kept off the bridge, scrambled along the river bank on either side to obtain points of vantage, regardless of the carefully tended terraces and shrubbery. With that flaring light on the water, it was like some lurid scene on the stage.

A rowboat poked under the old bridge with a constable in his shirt sleeves at the oars. In the stern was a sort of dragnet weighted at the bottom, with ropes to pass ashore on either side. Seeing this significant object a hush fell on the crowd. They expected a human body at the least. The oarsmen took another man aboard to manipulate the net. The constables were but human, of course, and called back and forth to each other in important sounding voices. The sergeant stood on the parapet of the bridge to issue his orders. Mme Storey put the pot of pansies on the pavement, that it might not be knocked overboard in the excitement.

The dragnet was dropped astern, and a line passed to a waiting constable on either bank. Pulling the net into position, so that it filled the whole bed of the little river, they commenced to walk slowly along the water's edge, dragging it behind them. An uncanny silence fell on the crowd. All you could hear was the shuffle of new arrivals pushing for a look.

The constables had not much more than started to walk along the bank, when they stopped again. Turning, they played the ropes tentatively like a fisherman with a nibble. Out of the stillness one spoke low voiced to the sergeant:

"We've got something, sir."

A long breath escaped from the crowd: "Ahh!"

"Handle it gently," said Mme Storey.

"Pass the ropes back to the man in the boat," said the sergeant. "Let him haul in both together. Steady, now!"

It was done as he ordered. While the man at the oars kept the boat in midstream, the one standing in the stern pulled the two ropes in slowly hand over hand. The search-light was beating full on him like a spotlight on the stage. He began to take in the net itself. The silence was breathless now. Finally a heavy object was seen to be weighing down the bottom of the net. The constable leaned out to lift it clear. It came out of the water streaming; a big flower pot! A pot of pansies, the flowers broken somewhat but still fresh and vivid after their long immersion in cold water!

The crowd thought that the joke was on us, and a derisive laugh broke from them. Voices cried out: "Try again, old man!"

The sergeant looked questioningly at my mistress.

"That is what I wanted," she said, smiling.

"But, madam, all this trouble for a pot of pansies?"

"I shall be glad to reimburse you."

He waved this suggestion aside. An absurd look of perplexity filled his face. "You have one already," he said, pointing to the pot on the pavement.

"I was trying to match it," said Mme Storey, smiling.

He gave it up with a helpless shrug. The flower pot was passed up to the bridge and the boat sent home. The crowd, seeing that there was to be no more excitement, began to melt away, still laughing at what they supposed to be the discomfiture of the police.

A pot of pansies! It was the key to our whole case, and Mme Storey with her marvellous instinct had put her finger on it in the beginning. She received the precious find into her own hands. She would allow no one to examine it. She bent down on the pavement to drain the water out of it, concealing the operation from the rest of us with her own body. It took a little time. While everybody was twisting and craning to get a look at the pot, I stole a glance at Bristed. His face was sick with terror. He was not looking at the pot; his eyes were darting this way and that across the bridge, as if he were meditating flight. Straiker and I exchanged a glance, and Straiker edged around on the other side of him.

Mme Storey's voice came from the pavement. "This will drip for an hour. Lend me that old cape, Mr. Bristed, to wrap it up in."

This was the cape with which Bristed had impersonated the old man. It was still hanging over his arm. He passed it to Mme Storey. She wrapped the pot completely up in it, flowers and all, and gave it to Straiker to carry. The other pot was left standing on the pavement.

"What shall I do with this one?" said the station guard, touching it with his foot.

"Oh, that has served its purpose now," said Mme, Storey carelessly. "Take it home and present it to your wife. But I spilled some water in it. Mr. Straiker, lend him your raincoat to carry it in."

She herself wrapped it in the raincoat and handed it to the guard, who bore it proudly as a souvenir of a great occasion.

By this time the police had gathered their apparatus together. Mme Storey made them a handsome present for their trouble, good-byes were exchanged, and the motor patrol went clanging back up the hill. Once more the six of us were left alone on the bridge.

"Where next, ma'am?" asked the guard.

"Back to the railway station," she said. "We shall just be in good time to catch the eleven forty-five for Banchester."

"But how about the old woman?" he asked with a falling face.

"Well," said Mme Storey, "I infer that, having got rid of her incubus, she went back to Banchester on that train. That's where she came from."

"No, ma'am," he said positively, "she never came around the station again that night."

"Who did take that train?" asked Mme Storey, smiling.

"There was only one passenger that night—a man."

"What sort of man?"

"A rough-looking customer, ma'am. That's all I can tell you. Nothing about him in particular to notice."

"Wasn't he about the same size as the old woman?" she asked.

"Well, since you put it to me, yes, ma'am."

"And what was he carrying?"

"Let me see—a small satchel, squarish in shape—by Gad! yes, ma'am, the same sort of satchel
she
carried!"

"Exactly," said Mme Storey, lighting a fresh cigarette, "and the female clothes were then in the satchel. Being a stranger here, he wouldn't know where to hide them in safety, and he had to carry them back."

"By Gad!" said the guard admiringly, "but, begging your pardon, ma'am, how did you know she—he was going back?"

"Oh, that's easy," said Mme Storey; "a man who takes such pains to disguise himself doesn't mean to run away!"

In his enthusiastic admiration the guard quite forgot his British obsequiousness. "Now that's what I call a bit of head work!" he cried.

We returned to the railway station, Straiker carrying one pot, the guard the other. The one which had been fished from the river still dripped water on Mr. Straiker's clothes, notwithstanding the folds of the cape around it. In the station Mme Storey sent a telegram to Inspector Battram to report progress, while the guard went off to deposit his prize in his own quarters. He returned Mr. Straiker's raincoat.

We still had a while to wait for the train. The Bristeds must have been suffering the torments of the damned during this time. Mrs. Bristed, who never gave away much in her face, hid it best; her husband, still essaying to play the good fellow with his jokes, his enthusiasm, his loud laughter, looked positively ghastly. His limbs twitched, his face was streaked and discoloured, his eyes looked mad with fear. How he endured it, I don't know. I suppose, if Straiker hadn't been there, he would have made a break for it. As usual in such cases, their common trouble did not have the effect of drawing the couple together. The little glances they threw at each other were full of hatred. I suppose each was blaming the other for the pass they were in.

The train came along half empty, and we had no difficulty in getting a compartment to ourselves. The pot of pansies was carefully deposited in a rack. It had ceased to drip by now. Bristed's tormented eyes kept returning to it. At other times he kept glancing in a sick fashion at my mistress. He couldn't understand her tactics. Why not open the thing and put him out of his suspense? Yet he dreaded to have her open it. All this was written in his face while he kept up his inconsequential talk. Finally he could stand it no longer.

"What is the significance of this pot of pansies which the woman—or man—threw away?" he asked with his agonized grin.

"Well," said Mme Storey, smiling drily. "I fancy there is more in it than pansies. If I have reasoned correctly, there is a machine within the pot to generate the gas which put us all to sleep the other night and made it easy for the criminal to enter the compartment and do his work."

"But," said Bristed, with a great air of bewilderment, "I thought Mr. Hendrie brought it on the train himself!"

"He did," said Mme Storey. "It was handed to him on the way to the station by an accomplice of the murderer. Ingenious, wasn't it, to make the old man put himself to sleep, in a manner of speaking, as well as any other persons who might be in the way. In fact, it was the most cleverly planned murder of my experience."

So much for Bristed. He laughed and clapped his thigh and cried: "By Gad! By Gad!" while his face was perfectly livid.

Yet he was somewhat relieved, because he understood by Mme Storey's words that she did not mean to open the package immediately.

That extraordinary woman, my mistress, settled herself comfortably in her corner and proceeded to go to sleep. She did not even take the precaution to tell me to watch our precious piece of evidence in the rack overhead; but of course there was little danger that I would forget it. I was on wires; no sleep for me; nor for Straiker either, especially since Mme Storey had told him what the flower pot might be expected to reveal.

The wretched Bristed talked jerkily on, while his wife watched him through eyelids narrowed in contempt. "By George! what a woman! what a woman! ... You might know she was an American.... Strange she should have happened to be riding in the very carriage where the murder was committed ... with her trained mind! Marvellous! ... It's a privilege to be associated with her.... That is, of course, if her theory is correct..."

While his tongue wagged in this fashion, his sick eyes expressed a very different language. Pure hatred glittered out of them when they fell on Straiker or on me. He would gladly have made away with us if he could. Ever and anon his glance travelled furtively up to the shrouded flower pot in the rack, and then toward the window. I think he would have taken a chance on pitching it through the glass could he have been sure that it would be completely destroyed along the right of way.

Sometimes he would fall silent, and you could see the fine beads of sweat spring out on his forehead. He would surreptitiously wipe his face and burst into talk again. Poor wretch! Yet when we rumbled back over that horrible viaduct he never even noticed it. One inferred that it was not remorse that was eating him, but simply a craven fear for his own skin.

We reached Banchester at one o'clock. As we alighted from the train Bristed said facetiously: "Well, what next?"

"I can do nothing further until morning," said Mme Storey.

He stammered with a painful eagerness that he tried in vain to hide: "Perhaps you and Miss Brickley would come and spend the rest of the night with us. We would try to make you more comfortable than the hotel."

I thought he had a great cheek to ask us. But I suppose he still flattered himself that he had not given anything away—that he was still unsuspected.

To my astonishment Mme Storey accepted. "Thank you very much," she said. "We will come with pleasure."

My heart sank. If ever there was a desperate man Bristed was he. His look suggested that he would stop at nothing in order to get us into his power—or, it would be more proper to say, to get that incriminating piece of evidence away from us. But of course I could not say anything. Mme Storey always knows what she is doing. I could not appear to hang back. I just had to swallow my fears and make out that I, too, was grateful for the invitation.

We parted from Straiker at the train gate and took a taxi back to the little cottage alongside the laboratory. There was no other house very near, and such houses as one could see showed no light. An ideal situation for murder. If Bristed was already faced by the prospect of hanging, what was there to restrain him from further murders?

They switched on lights, and I placed my burden on the centre table of the little drawing room. At this moment Bristed was worked up to the highest pitch of excitement. His legs and arms jerked like a jumping jack's. I suppose he expected the flower pot to be opened up there and then and had nerved himself up to a desperate deed. Hysteria was gripping my throat. But Mme Storey said with a careless air:

"I'm not going to look at this thing until Inspector Battram comes. I have telegraphed for him."

I heard a long breath escape from Bristed. He had obtained another reprieve. He relaxed.

Mrs. Bristed said we must have a bite of supper before turning in. She took Mme Storey upstairs to freshen up after our hours in the train and went off to prepare the food. I remained in the drawing room to guard my charge. Bristed stayed with me, alternately sitting down and jumping up again; moving around the room, talking all the time, of course, while his furtive eyes strayed from my face to the shrouded object on the table and back to my face again. Momentarily I expected him to spring on me. How thankful I was when I heard my mistress come running down the stairs again.